Thursday 26 March

Felix Mendelssohn
Concerto for Violin and Piano
in D minor
¹⁸²³

1. Allegro
2. Adagio
3. Allegro

Isabelle Faust violin
Kristian Bezuidenhout piano

Mendelssohn wrote his Concerto for Violin and Piano in 1823, when he was 14. For any 14-year-old to be writing a concerto would be precocious enough, but by this stage Mendelssohn was already an experienced composer, with a piano concerto, a violin concerto (not the famous one) and nine symphonies for string orchestra to his name. Just two years later, he was to create one of the towering masterpieces of the Romantic chamber repertoire, his glorious Octet for strings.

Growing up in an energetically cultured family environment certainly helped. As assimilated Jews, the Mendelssohns were dedicated to the German notion of Bildung: education in the widest possible sense – development of the philosophical, emotional and spiritual, as well as the intellectual faculties. Mendelssohn’s mother, Lea, was a prime example of what we’d now call the ‘Tiger Mother’. One young visitor to the Mendelssohn household remembered her pricking up her ears when she heard young Felix laughing somewhere, and calling out, ‘Felix, tust du nichts?’ – ‘Felix, are you doing nothing?’

Initially Mendelssohn’s parents weren’t happy with the idea of his becoming a musician – there were safer, surer ways of finding fame and fortune. But by the time he was eight they yielded to the inevitable and found him a composition teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter. It turned out to be an inspired choice. Zelter gave his young pupil a thorough grounding in the craft of music-making, at the same time introducing him to the music of the 18th-century giant J S Bach, then little-known outside specialist musical circles.

The encounter with Bach was a turning point for Mendelssohn, and Bach’s influence can be heard at several points in this Concerto. The choice of two soloists – in an age in which the soloist as romantic individual was beginning to achieve cult status – shows how deeply Bach (who wrote several magnificent ‘double’ concertos) had left his mark. So too does the energetic, muscular counterpoint at the beginning of the first movement. There are also echoes of Mozart, especially the magnificent D minor Piano Concerto, K466, and yet this is also clearly the work of a young composer who is beginning to know his own mind. Especially daring is the slower, recitative-like section later on, in which intensely romantic violin writing is accompanied by tremolos from the piano – suddenly this is very much 19th-century music.

Mendelssohn was an important exponent of J S Bach's music in his lifetime. After reviving a score of Bach's St Matthew Passion from his grandmother, he staged the work in Berlin in 1829 – the first ever performance outside of Leipzig. Mendelssohn's admiration for Bach's music is also reflected in the oratorios Elijah and St Paul, as well as his six Preludes and Fugues for solo piano.

The long, complex first movement is followed by a simpler but very touching Adagio, its style looking forward to Mendelssohn’s famous Songs Without Words – soon to be a must-have in every middle class Victorian and German ‘Biedermeier’ parlour. The finale returns to the driven, impassioned style of the first movement, but before long the piano introduces a hymn-like theme with a strongly Bachian flavour. Chorale-like themes were to play similar roles in some of Mendelssohn’s later masterpieces, yet Mendelssohn’s use of it here has a dramatic force of its own. The chorale returns on violin and piano near the end of the Concerto in a confident D major, appearing to herald a triumphant major-key ending – all very suitable for a Romantic concerto. Yet it is in the Concerto’s original dark and stormy D minor that soloists and orchestra have their emphatic last word. Even at this early stage in his career, Mendelssohn is capable of being very much his own man.

_{Note by Stephen Johnson}

_{Image: Bohemian Landscape with Mount Milleschauer by Caspar David Friedrich, 1808}

Schumann Symphony No 3 in E-flat major Op 97,
'Rhenish'
¹⁸⁵⁰

1. Lebhaft (Lively)
2. Scherzo: Sehr mässig (Very moderate)
3. Nicht schnell (Not fast)
4. Feierlich (Ceremonious)
5. Lebhaft (Lively)

In March 1850, Robert Schumann was offered the post of Music Director in the Rhineland port of Düsseldorf. At first he was apprehensive: he had doubts (well-founded, as it turned out) about his abilities as a conductor, and he remembered his friend Mendelssohn’s disparaging comments about the quality of the musicianship in Düsseldorf. It seems he was hoping for something more prestigious in his home city of Leipzig, or possibly in his adopted home of Dresden – though the experience of the recent armed uprising in Dresden had made him understandably nervous. Even so, Schumann’s mood could swing suddenly: a trip to Cologne, just up river from Düsseldorf, later that month sent his imagination soaring. The magnificent Gothic cathedral thrilled him, and in September, he made a point of returning to witness a procession for the enthronement of the city’s new Cardinal.

Delight in the sights, sounds and general character of the Rhinelands was a major influence on the moods and colours of the Third Symphony. But the title Schumann chose, ‘Rhenish’, is also a sign of his growing nationalist sympathies – as is his use of German tempo markings instead of the usual Italian. For Germans, the River Rhine has long been a potent national symbol, as Wagner understood well when he made it the hiding place of the elemental treasure in his opera Rhinegold.

It is important to remember that in Schumann’s time, ‘Germany’ as a political entity did not exist: instead there was a strange, loose federation of German speaking duchies, principalities and city states, and the notion of a unified pan-German land was still a Utopian dream, a long way short of the sinister significance it was to acquire in the 20th century.

While Schumann may have been thinking in specifically national terms, the glorious opening – a theme that bursts straight onto the scene and sustains its song as though borne forward on a powerful current – has been strongly influential outside German-speaking lands: Dvořák, Borodin, Elgar and Nielsen were all audibly impressed by its headstrong 3/4 momentum. For Schumann, this was undoubtedly a reflection of the great river itself: there are quieter moments, but the sweeping energy continues to the end.

Schumann may also have been thinking of the river in the following Scherzo. This movement is often described as a Ländler – the country cousin of the sophisticated urban waltz – and the main theme does have a hearty Germanic folksy quality. But Schumann’s metronome marking is relatively fast which, combined with the emphatic downbeat, gives this music the character of an energetic rowing song.

Popular in Austria and Bavaria at the end of the 18th century, the Ländler is a folk dance in 3/4 time featuring hopping and stamping. With the growing popularity of dance halls in 19th-century Europe, the Ländler became both quicker and more elegant.

The third movement is a gentle intermezzo, with fine watery imagery: the flowing, divided lower strings (subtly enhanced by cello solo) in the second theme, and the running bass semiquavers in the coda, are suggestive of deep, unseen undercurrents. This hint of something powerful at work under the surface prepares the way for the fourth movement. Here the key changes to a grave E-flat minor, as Schumann records his impressions of the ceremony in Cologne Cathedral. So far in this symphony we’ve heard nothing from the three trombones; now they enter in solemn splendour, imitating the counterpoint of a sombre church motet. E-flat minor was a key Schumann chose for some of his darkest utterances: the tragic Manfred Overture and the dread-saturated ‘Ich hab im Traum geweinet’ (I wept in a dream) from the song cycle Dichterliebe are in the same key.

The final movement brings extreme contrast, bursting into life without any preparation – a reminder perhaps of how Schumann was prone to abrupt moodswings. The effect is like stepping out of a vast, dimly lit cathedral, full of grim reminders of suffering and mortality, into the bright sunlight of a bustling Rhineland market town. Gradually Schumann draws together memories of themes from earlier movements, before ending in a rousing tumult of brass fanfares and surging strings. The elemental power of the great river now carries us through to the close.

_{Note by Stephen Johnson
Stephen Johnson is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber). He also contributes regularly to BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian, and broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 (Discovering Music), BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.}

_{Image: Town on the Rhine by Heinrich Eduard Heyn, late 19th century}

Isabelle Faust
^violin

After winning the renowned Leopold Mozart Competition and the Paganini Competition at a very young age, Isabelle Faust soon gave regular performances with the world’s major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Baroque Orchestra Freiburg.

This led to regular collaborations with conductors like Claudio Abbado, Giovanni Antonini, Frans Brüggen, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Philippe Herreweghe, Andris Nelsons and Robin Ticciati.

Isabelle Faust’s vast artistic curosity includes all eras and forms of instrumental cooperation. Thus she never considers music as an end in itself but rather advances the piece’s essence in a devoted, subtle and conscientious way. In addition to big symphonic violin concertos this includes, for instance, Schubert’s octet with historical instruments as well as György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with Anna Prohaska or Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat with Dominique Horwitz. With great commitment she renders an outstanding service to the performance of contemporary music. Premieres of Péter Eötvös, Brett Dean, Ondřej Adámek and Oscar Strasnoy are in preparation for the upcoming seasons.

Numerous recordings have been unanimously praised by critics and awarded the Diapason d’or, the Gramophone Award, the Choc de l’année and other prizes. Recent recordings include Johann Sebastian Bach’s violin concertos with Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s violin concerto with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Pablo Heras-Casado. In 2018, a recording with sonatas for violin and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach was released, recorded with Kristian Bezuidenhout. Isabelle Faust presented further popular recordings among others of the Sonatas and Partitas for violin solo by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as violin concertos by Ludwig van Beethoven and Alban Berg under the direction of Claudio Abbado. She shares a long-standing chamber music partnership with the pianist Alexander Melnikov. Among others, joint recordings with sonatas for piano and violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven or Johannes Brahms have been released.

_{Image: Felix Broede}

The LSO was established in 1904 and has a unique ethos. As a musical collective, it is built on artistic ownership and partnership. With an inimitable signature sound, the LSO’s mission is to bring the greatest music to the greatest number of people.

The LSO has been the only Resident Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in the City of London since it opened in 1982, giving 70 symphonic concerts there every year. The Orchestra works with a family of artists that includes some of the world’s greatest conductors – Sir Simon Rattle as Music Director, Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda and François-Xavier Roth, and Michael Tilson Thomas as Conductor Laureate.

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_{Image: Ranald Mackechnie}